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Our Training Weekend: How It Went

After the rousing success of our Volunteer Taster Training Day, turnout for our weekend was lower than expected. There were last minute cancellations, and some no-shows, which I guess is to be expected with volunteers, particularly those you don’t know yet.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a success. Kaizen, the training company, sent us the brilliant Andy, and despite, or perhaps in part because of, the small scale of the group on both days, the training was a wonderful team-building exercise.

Due to personal stuff, I was only able to attend the Sunday. I dragged my sister along (she’s fifteen and volunteers in a charity shop on Saturday, so I thought any sort of volunteer training would be right up her street), and we had a great time. Granted, we were very giggly, and at one point had to be separated, but a big part of the day was getting to know each other better, and I find people can get to know me best by looking at my sister.

The overriding message, on the Sunday at least, was about boxes, and how we’re all in them, and it’s left us all thinking- or trying to think- slightly differently. About everything. All the time.

We’re hoping to run further training days in the future, so I won’t be giving away too many spoilers, but it really is worth coming along next time, anyone who’s interested, whether you come back as a volunteer or not (although we’d rather you did).

Our quiz is on Wednesday, and tickets are selling fast, so I’d also encourage anyone who wants to get in on that to speak soon. Tickets are £5 a head, teams of 6, and it’s at Club Kingswood, 8pm. And my team are going to win.

I haven’t been in the office now for a couple of weeks, due to the aforementioned stuff, and so I’m a little out of the loop, but it seems like we’re really picking up the pace with the fundraising, and talking to local supermarkets about some weekend fundraisers after Easter, so watch this space for any information about that. Also, I hope you caught us in the Echo last week, and saw the bit about our food collection. If you missed it, and want to see some of my colleagues pulling some super-interesting faces, you can catch it here:

Conveniently, I managed to be out of the office- and completely out of the way- at the time of the photo op! It’s nice to get the recognition as an organisation, though- and the trolley will be in place for a few months to come. So get donating!

In other news, and the last bit of news I have for this week, our website seems to be fully up and running and fabulous again. You can catch up on the latest news and find out about us in a much less rambly way at:

Choicesfamily.co.uk

Next week: ‘Let’s Get Quizzical: Why I’m No Longer Allowed to do Puns, and Also How My Team Beat Everyone’ (working title, dependent mainly on my team beating everyone).